Family economic well-being — including financial, material, and related socio-emotional resources — can support a family’s long-term stability, a positive home environment, and children’s healthy development. Yet, 1 in 10 families with children live below the poverty line. Early childhood home visiting (ECHV) has the potential to support families’ economic well-being. The Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation in collaboration with the Health Resources and Services Administration initiated the Supporting Family Economic Well-Being through Home Visiting project to better understand how to define and measure family economic well-being and to learn how ECHV agencies have supported or could support it. This report summarizes the findings from targeted reviews of literature and practice documents from ECHV and related fields, such as social work, child welfare, and employment- and income-focused supports.

This alert is to ensure that NO family served by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) loses their medical coverage because of a lack of knowledge about the renewal process. Resources to support agencies as they help individuals renew coverage are provided below.

The key information that families need to receive:

• UPDATE contact information with the State Medicaid agency.
• RESPOND to the Medicaid renewal form when it comes in the mail. If they don't, they may lose their coverage even if they are still eligible.
• PARENTS should respond even if they are not eligible or enrolled in other coverage. Their children could still be eligible for coverage.
• CHECK OTHER OPTIONS: If no longer eligible for Medicaid, they should check if they can get coverage through their employer or through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace at www.healthcare.gov.
• To receive state-specific Medicaid renewal templates to help get the word out about the above information, contact a local Medicaid official.

For individual outreach, please consider these resources for office posting and distribution:

• State-specific Unwinding Flyers (in English and Spanish)
• State-specific information to help families update their contact information.

The Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services has developed a Communications Toolkit to help people with Medicaid or CHIP take steps to renew their health coverage or find other coverage options. This Toolkit includes important messages and sample materials (drop-in articles, social media messages, and flyers).

Looking for something that can give specific actions to different community partners? This Call to Action lets different groups (e.g., states, unions, employers, the health care community) know what they can do to spread the word and get people's heath care renewed.

Safe, reliable childcare has been inaccessible and unaffordable for too many Americans. Disparities between who can and cannot afford childcare reflect structural inequities in the United States. Shift workers, single parents, student parents, and families of color are especially affected by the failings of the childcare system. Inadequacies of the childcare system hinder family economic mobility and perpetuate generational wealth gaps. The 2023 Annie E. Casey Foundation KIDS Count® Data Book describes how the country’s lack of affordable and accessible childcare negatively affects children, families, and U.S. businesses. The report presents national and state data across four domains — economic well-being, education, health, and family and community — and ranks states in overall child well-being.

On June 3, 2023, the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 was signed into law, a legislative package previously agreed upon by the White House and House Speaker to suspend the national debt ceiling limit through January 1, 2025 in exchange for a package of spending cuts and policy changes, including changes to work requirements in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and TANF. The American Public Human Services Association has developed a summary of relevant human services provisions and the corresponding effective dates.

Regardless of their size, agencies and organizations need to demonstrate the success of their kinship programs to their funders and other stakeholders. Showing success requires a strategic approach and an understanding of general principles that support effective data collection and evaluation. The Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network will host a webinar on July 17, 2023 from 2:00 to 3:30 p.m. ET which will explore the foundational principles and strategies to demonstrate success. 

When schools closed in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, 30 million children lost access to the free and reduced-price school meals that help reduce hunger, support health, and ease the pressure on household food budgets. Congress created the Pandemic EBT Program to replace the school breakfasts and lunches families lost when schools closed. The program provides an EBT card with grocery benefits to families whose children are eligible for free or reduced-price school meals. This report by the Food Research & Action Center explains the impact of providing grocery benefits to families when their children lose access to free or reduced-price school meals and the experience families had in accessing benefits.

There is an increasing understanding of how poverty can impact children’s development and create persistent gaps between children raised in poverty and their higher-income peers. Early childhood programs do much to support young children by providing a variety of vital services to stabilize families, but stability is tenuous for families living persistently in poverty. Numerous innovative early childhood programs are now focusing on promoting parental economic mobility and working alongside families to build skills and promote their attainment of bigger goals. This EMPath paper presents the importance to early childhood programs, particularly those whose mission is to support children living in poverty, of integrating economic mobility coaching for parents to strengthen outcomes for kids.

Mothers living in poverty often face complex circumstances and major stressors that strain mental health and make it difficult to get and keep a job. The Mental Health Outreach for Mothers or MOMS Partnership® is a community-based model for helping mothers with low incomes manage their stress, reduce depressive symptoms, and improve their social and economic mobility. Central to the model is an 8-week stress management course based on cognitive behavioral therapy that is co-facilitated by skilled clinicians and mothers from the community with lived experience similar to mothers who enroll in the program; the mothers with lived experience are called Community Mental Health Ambassadors (CMHAs). Other features of the program include the use of incentives to support regular attendance and providing services in a central community location. The MOMS Partnership was launched by the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut in 2011 and has been implemented in TANF, public housing agencies, and other related programs. The Office of Family Assistance hosted a webinar on June 29, 2023 which provided participants with the opportunity to learn more about MOMS and the implementation experiences in TANF programs. Speakers included staff from Elevate Policy Lab and The Adjacent Possible; MOMS Stress Management facilitators; and human services leaders from Maine, Vermont, and the District of Columbia. Speakers delivered presentations on What is The MOMS Partnership?, MOMS in Practice – Lessons from Clinicians and CMHAs, and Operating MOMS in TANF and Related Programs.